The afternoon has washed itself from the bricks,
collected itself in puddles on the street and the feet
of the people that pass bring twilight in that settles
on the stones as the windowlights fall one by one.
Upstairs there is a room, and yesterday there was a room
yet in between these cities shift and rise
shiver and recede and walls fall away –
the road outside this room is not the road
I followed home the night before
At midnight in Venice the water is dark
and the buildings lean close and confide with
the unnamed enfolded lovers in shadow on the bridge.
The streets have ceased to ravel and lay themselves
bare to the melting light of a rose moon.